Knighthood, masculinity and the other : the Hospitaller Knights of Malta in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

The Order of the Hospital of St John the Baptist of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta-in short the Order of Malta-was a military-religious institution of the Roman Catholic Church whose members were recruited from among the sons of the European nobility. From around the year 1080 there is evidence of a Hospital dedicated to St John the Baptist, operating in Jerusalem and catering for the needs of Latin pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Those that ran the Hospital came to be known as the Hospitallers. In response to the clianging socio-political situation in the Levant, which saw the threat from Islam increasing, the Hospitallers became knights and sea-faring warriors. Together with the Knights Templar they constituted the main defence of the Latin Kingdoms of the East till the end of the thirteenth century. The vicissitudes of Christian-Muslim relations in the Mediterranean was a major factor that influenced the Order's history over the centuries and which in due course led it to settle in Malta from 1530 to 1798.